Monday, January 24, 2005

Speaking of evangelicals (jeez, this diary is linked today), Vaughn Thompson of Icthus has a post on "Why I am Not an Evangelical." He's pretty well focused on that angle, but we think the overall point applies to Christians of all stripes.

And what is that point? Well, it's made in this story from Ron Sider:

Graham Cyster, a Christian whom I know from South Africa, recently told me a painful story about a personal experience two decades ago when he was struggling against apartheid as a young South African evangelical. One night, he was smuggled into an underground Communist cell of young people fighting apartheid. "Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ," they asked, half hoping for an alternative to the violent communist strategy they were embracing.

Graham gave a clear, powerful presentation of the gospel, showing how personal faith in Christ wonderfully transforms persons and creates one new body of believers where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, rich nor poor, black nor white. The youth were fascinated. One seventeen-year-old exclaimed, "That is wonderful! Show me where I can see that happening." Graham's face fell as he sadly responded that he could not think of anywhere South African Christians were truly living out the message of the gospel. "Then the whole thing is a piece of sh**," the youth angrily retorted. Within a month he left the country to join the armed struggle against apartheid - and eventually giving his life for his beliefs.

The young man was right. If Christians do not live what they preach, the whole thing is a farce.

A Roman Catholic church in Boulder has stirred up some controversy by burying the ashes of fetal tissues and remains from a local clinic without that clinic's knowledge. We're not quite sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, the ashes deserve better treatment than to be simply chucked. But on the other, how arrogant can you be to claim this material for your church? Even stipulating the pro-birth argument that these are the remains of dead babies, who gave the church permission to bury them in a Catholic cemetary, and in a presumably Catholic service?

Did we mention Fredrick Clarkson is speaking at a conference on challenging the Christian Far Right?

Last link: the Chicago Sun-Times has an occasional series on the spirituality of public figures. This week, it's David Lynch's term. It's both a surprise and...not quite a surprise...to discover that the Maharishi (yes, that Maharishi) taught him about meditation.